


Osidius the Emphatic

by wreathed



Category: Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Reality, Anal Sex, Angst, Arguing, Blow Jobs, Break Up, Cheating, Childhood, Developing Relationship, Kissing, Kitchen Sex, M/M, Memories, Memory Alteration, Phone Sex, Porn, Porn With Plot, Reverse Chronology, Secret Relationship, Sex, Surreal, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:01:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever seen <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/"><i>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i></a>?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Osidius the Emphatic

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by blacktofade.

James messes up a link four times in ten minutes, and shooting only started half an hour ago.

The heated, musty air of the Dunsfold hangar makes him feel drowsy. It's a horrible summer's day, the kind that makes the collar of James's shirt stick uncomfortably to the back of his shining neck and his long hair itch. Andy calls a break after declaring with frustration that they aren't getting anywhere, and a collective fractious murmur ripples through the standing, sweltering audience. James slopes off to find Richard in the hope that he will let James drink some of his poncy bottled water.

Richard is with Jeremy, standing on a paved area outside and smoking. James doesn't join him; he brings Richard's bottle of Evian to his lips instead, desperate to cool down and clear his head.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Jeremy looking at him for too long for the third time that afternoon - he's carefully watching the tilt of James's jaw, the moisture clinging to his lips, his furious, thirsty swallow. James wonders if the heat is making him delirious as well as slow and stupid.

 _You're imagining things_ , he tells himself sternly, and pushes any treacherous thoughts he might be having to the back of his mind in the kind of effort in self-denial he's starting to have to exercise often.

"You're an absolute arse, May," says Jeremy irritably, supposedly apropos of his poor presenting performance. He flicks his gaze away as soon as James tries to meet his eyes.

The day needs something to cut through the dry air - a quick-as-a-flash downpour that would wash everything clean, give a fresh start. That would stop James thinking he can get away with leaving the house as late as half past nine and find his way to the hangar on time, stop him saying 'V8' when the script says 'V6', stop him turning his pensive mind to why Jeremy seems to be distancing himself from him, holding something back.

"Come back in, guys," the floor manager calls from the fire exit. "We'll do the news now and try James's link later." Richard stubs out his cigarette and they return to the studio together. James feels the back of his neck prickle - not from the sun; Jeremy is standing behind him and James is conscious of his heated gaze again.

James wants to grab Jeremy and ask _what are you doing, what is this?_ and shove him roughly against the nearest damn wall. Perhaps that might make the lightening strike, bring on the humid storm.

 

_Three Months Earlier:_

 

The letter lands on his doormat innocuously enough - not at the same time as the rest of the post but with no fanfare or warning bells; only the word 'Confidential' is typed smartly at the top of the envelope and there's nothing remarkable about that.

But one _slit, slip_ of the paper and James feels like someone's scored open his skin, such is the _thud, thud_ in his tight chest. He reads: a company name he's heard mentioned occasionally on the news, a font that reminds him vaguely of Bupa's correspondence. Then what Jeremy has done. The letter tells him ('we strongly advise') to go through the same procedure ('make an emergency appointment'), and to do it in the next forty-eight hours or less.

If he thought about it - messing around emotions with a machine, crude digital elimination - it was Clarkson all over. Call up Lacuna Inc, carry out a controlled elimination and that was it; no more sleepless nights. The usual blind power and explosions and hammers.

* * *

"We do usually recommend that all memories of the person are removed, Mr May."

"I've already told you that's not possible," James replies tersely. "I work with this man in the public eye. I can't simply forget him."

"Yours is a special case," the technician conceded.

"And you'll sign this, to say you won't tell-?"

" _Lacuna Incorporated_ operates with the upmost discretion, Mr May. Particularly in cases such as yours."

"I'm bloody paying you enough," James replies. The technician's smile at this remark is knowing and unctuous.

"Only removing selected memories about a person is a moderately more risky procedure than the one we usually carry out," he tells him, opening a filing cabinet in the corner of the office. "It also carries a higher likelihood of relapse. You'll need to fill out some additional forms."

James sighs.

Eventually, the procedure is paid for and arranged to be carried out that night. James goes home. There's a message from Jeremy (sounding hungover, completely clueless, perfectly under the impression that he and James were never were more than co-presenters and friends) on his answerphone when he turns his mobile back on. James doesn't call back.

* * *

It's the same wiry, bespectacled technician that turns up to James's house in an unmarked van as soon as it's dark. James lies down on his own bed and is wired up to Lacuna's machine - a sinisterly plain white box with its own control console. It's like something out of a high budget science fiction film, or an instrument of the thought police, or the soulless, part-free engine for his ideal hydrogen-powered car of the future.

"You will recall all related memories in reverse order," the man explains, his voice dry and unwavering as if he doesn't want to encourage emotion. James can barely hear him as his heart goes _thud, thud_ ; his throat dries. "You will wake in the morning, alone, as if you have had a night of heavy drinking. You will have no memory of this experience, as well as no memory of the targeted relationship. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yep," James says. "Can we get on with it please?"

"Of course." The technician coughs. He swipes his finger over a print scanner and taps away at the console for a moment; James wills himself not to think during the wait. Then the dark room dissolves, and he feels compelled to shut his eyes. And yet he can still see, see a different room to the one he's in now.

It's a kind of lucid dream; he can see every event from a prime vantage point in his own mind's eye and something is keeping him aware of his real self lying unmoving, watching. He stumbles into his latest memories where Jeremy is unambiguously anything other than a friend-and-co-presenter - he's coming from the clinic, asking about the procedure, googling 'Lacuna controversy' - and feels immediately like he's not supposed to be there. It doesn't feel natural to be looking across at yourself, no mirrors.

He's opening the letter.

"Fed up of fighting," James murmurs to the empty hallway. "OK. Enough. Enough, now."

* * *

They're arguing. Heatedly. Properly. Weeks of silence on the matter mean they're shouting now.

"We said we wouldn't talk about this today. We said we were capable of acting like professionals," Jeremy spits out. Richard left them less than ten minutes ago, his presence the mediator in their conflict even if he didn't realise it.

"Well, I don't think we are," James says. "And I think we need to sort out...Jeremy, this doesn't work anymore." Jeremy strides towards James at that, then looks as if he is going put his hand on James's shoulder but changes his mind. Jeremy, reckless unthinking ungoverned Jeremy withdrawing his touch like that makes the watching James unexpectedly angry.

"James-"

"Can you carry on like this?" he asks Jeremy in a flat voice.

"No. I can't. Most people though, they just move away and forget-"

"And we can't do that."

"There's always Lacuna," Jeremy says, the remark almost throw-away.

James's expression changes completely, hardens. "No, there isn't. I'm not having someone meddle with my mind. I wish I could forget, too. I really do. But-"

"I've already been to their clinic," says Jeremy, suddenly no longer sounding incensed but miserable and helpless. "I'm going to do it. James, you don't have a wife and kids, you don't understand-"

"Oh, not this again-" And then Jeremy's walking towards the door as James's voice rises. "Say you won't do it. Promise you won't go to them."

Jeremy slams the door behind him hard enough to shake from James a final, angry "Promise me!"

* * *

The scene changes as quick as the flick of a light switch.

They're standing outside the studio hangar, very close together so they can hear each other's whispered words. In times gone, they might have kissed.

"Let's try and..."

"Yeah, OK. Leave it for a while. Because...but don't think this means..."

For a second, they smile slightly at each other.

"Now," says Jeremy, loudly, "Let's go and watch the film of your pissing ridiculous Reliant Robin microlight." James laughs. He sounds false.

* * *

"Bye," James says, and gives Jeremy an awkward peck on the lips in a dark corner of the restaurant's car park before they part ways.

* * *

They're both stark naked; Jeremy is inside James. His nails are digging hard into James's chest as James supports himself against the wall.

Like this, the watching James can see the horrible way they rut and grunt and slide and slap. Their bodies are familiar and yet flabby, old.

He can tell the affair was towards its end by now. His eyes are quite blank. Jeremy's eyes just stay closed.

* * *

James has Jeremy pushed up against the kitchen counter as he gives him slow, open-mouthed kisses; there hasn't been any filming for _Top Gear_ recently, they haven't seen each other at all for a while.

"I think-" Jeremy says, holding James by the arm, pushing him away a little, "I think that my wife's getting suspicious."

"Oh. Shit. But, I thought...overall, aren't things as they are worth a little, er, uncertainty?"

"Yes," Jeremy says, not quite meeting his eyes. "Of course. Listen, I'm sorry, but-" he pauses to glance up at the clock "I've got to leave now. I'm late for that meeting."

The watching James sees himself hitting the counter in shameful frustration as Jeremy leaves, then a moment of darkness again; the scene change, the extraction of the memory from his mind.

* * *

James holds up an Airfix model he's just completed in triumph. Jeremy, in his glasses, takes one discerning look at him over his laptop and doubles up in laughter.

"It should be...it should be _children_ making those things, James," Jeremy says, grinning across at where James is sitting in a way that, retrospectively, James can only describe as endearing.

"Well, they're not, are they? What with having their 'ippods' and 'whys' and whatnot. Someone's got to do them."

" _iPods_ and _wiis_ , James." Jeremy replies, grinning again. "We grown-ups have better things to do. In fact, if you're not too busy I'm sure I could come up with something _much_ better that we could be doing."

"Ah. I thought you were doing work on there!" James says, gesturing to Jeremy's laptop. "You've been looking at videos about lesbians again, haven't you?"

Jeremy closes the laptop and gets up to join James where he's sitting. "Might've been," he says in a lower voice, closer now, placing a hand on James's thigh."

"Careful of the glue!" James grumbles, putting the model aeroplane carefully back down on the coffee table.

"At least I'm not so repressed that I'd rather be sticking bits of plastic together with Humbrol."

"I didn't say that..." - James sighs - "I didn't say that that's what I'd rather be doing." Jeremy's hand has now slid up to James's crotch, and James's cheeks start to flush. He turns towards Jeremy. "Besides, I wasn't so repressed that time I held you to the bed and wouldn't let you get off for hours. Or-"

"True, James, true. But lately, we haven't been, er, so often-"

"We're busy people. Anyone could tell you that. But if you want to, now..."

Jeremy palms James's crotch more insistently, so James leans over - to kiss Jeremy and to unbutton Jeremy's jeans - and falls into the familiarity of it. He lets Jeremy rough him up with his teeth as he slowly undoes each button of Jeremy's shirt and lowers the waistband of Jeremy's jeans. It feels daring but familiar, close, right.

When his lips wrap around Jeremy's cock, Jeremy's feet flex against the carpet. When Jeremy comes, James swallows and gets up to kiss Jeremy again, the taste of him on his tongue, and they've never looked so old.

* * *

For a while, it's almost all sex - it forces an awkward recall that for most of their affair, their relationship, that's the only thing they'd done whenever it was possible to be alone together. A participant he may have been once, but the watching James feels as uncomfortable and aroused as any old voyeur.

He sees Jeremy going down on him and shies away from the stark detail of it all. He sees himself slicking four fingers up with lube and pressing them inside Jeremy before he pushes his cock into him - not that they actually shagged in the strictest sense that often, in the end - and he sees Jeremy do the same to him. He sees that time he tied Jeremy to the bed, and that time Jeremy traced his spine with his tongue and further still and James thought he'd never stop seeing stars.

Sex in each other's homes, sex in cars, sex against walls, sex with crowds of people just around the corner - they were so _fucking_ irresponsible, their minds madly addled by lust - and James was submerged in feeling, there in the moment, every single bloody time.

And he knows he should be mourning loss, or else celebrating the end of knowing he and Jeremy were ever lovers, but above all he is reacting to what he sees in the most base way - hours of intimate, relatively-uninhibited fucking is playing back in front of him and there's no way to stop seeing it. And as for mourning loss, he already knew he'd lost this for it doesn't happen anymore.

* * *

"Last night was - well, it was fucking amazing," Jeremy's voice crackles down the line after a brief pause in a conversation that had previously only been about scheduling conflicts, made as James is sitting in an identikit hotel room, as Jeremy is speeding up the M1.

"Love to have you under me right now."

James thinks he hears Jeremy swallow. "Mm?"

"Pin you to the passenger seat...drive you crazy..." James feels incredibly self-conscious, alone on this bland bed, but tries not to show it. And is getting turned on, despite himself, at the thought of Jeremy listening to him down the line. "Then I'd kiss you to shut you up and fuck you hard, my hand on your cock."

"You, er, naked right now?" Jeremy mumbles.

"Na," James replies. "I'm just in after putting away the Triumph. 'm wearing my leathers."

"Jesus, James." A pause. "I _really_ need to get off right now."

"Why not?" comes the reply, quick-smart. "You've hands-free, haven't you?"

"I'm _driving_." His words are still a little breathless.

"Well then, you'd better pull off at the nearest motorway services."

Jeremy snorts. "I'm already late! The bloody traffic back at the last junction, it was just-"

"Alright then. Arrive on time, come later. I'll be waiting for you here next week."

"You sick man," Jeremy laughs as James presses 'end call' and smirks.

* * *

After sleeping together at James's house in the middle of the hottest day that summer, they lounge around together naked and barely poke fun at each other - they are hot, sated, and without care. Jeremy is reading the newspaper.

The moment is wretched from him; the words Jeremy's eyes are scanning fall away from the page like grains of sand, and then the rest.

* * *

"What are we?" James asks Jeremy, quite serious, as they eat a takeaway at James's house in front of some rubbish on the telly with the volume turned low. "What are we going to be? Just sex, or something else?"

The piece of chicken Jalfrezi that was on its way to Jeremy's mouth is forgotten as Jeremy looks up, his fork held pointlessly in mid-air. "James, you don't _ask_ that sort of thing."

"Right then."

"Don't be such a tit. I like you, alright? As I always have done, but in a few new ways too. We know how stupid this is, and I never expected this to happen, but I'd been wanting you for so long and then you finally gave indication that, for one reason or another, you might want me back-"

"You...How long have you wanted me?"

Jeremy looks embarrassed. "A while. Just, a while. And, not that I can speak for you, but we're both sitting here together despite all the risks and the reasons not to. What does that tell you?"

James is sitting very close to Jeremy now. "It tells me that we're alone. No risks. I've even closed the curtains."

"Well then," Jeremy mutters into the curve of James's neck, and James feels mortified by how often his breath keeps hitching. "I'll just have to have my wicked way with you, won't I?"

That's all it takes - James doesn't resist as Jeremy shoves him onto his own sofa because James is absolutely shaking with it, for it. When Jeremy lies on top of him and tangles their denim-clad legs together, James reaches to slide one hand around the side of Jeremy's thigh and finds some solace in the fact that Jeremy is hot and hard and shaking too. It feels like months of tension unfurling and yet it's only been a week, oh God he's in trouble, it's only been a week since their last-

Jeremy pulls away, raking his teeth over James's bottom lip as he does so, like he doesn't want their kiss to end.

Then Jeremy is unfastening James's belt and pulling off James's t-shirt and James is doing the same to him until they're both naked. And Jeremy is flat on the sofa complaining about his back, and James is laughing.

It's who they are that causes the problems, but here they're just two people together, lit only by the flickering TV. Take away their conversation and who they're with, take away the context, and they're just two people who want what they're getting. James is blushing as Jeremy whispers filthy things in his ear and bucks against him. When James finally enters Jeremy, they've never looked closer, never been more entwined.

James is losing fewer arguments and more passion, more pleasure, than he thought he would. And a terrible stab of pain rushes through them as the James and Jeremy he sees come almost together and this moment disappears too, unsalvageable now.

* * *

They kiss behind the production office portakabin and still no-one sees.

* * *

"So," Jeremy says in James's ear, from behind him, "when do I get my hands on you again?"

James gives a low chuckle. "Soon, enough, I'm sure."

"Pricktease."

"I aim to please."

"Then your aim's not very good from where I'm standing."

Jeremy looks over to the office computer screen they're nearest. It shows a photo of the three of them from yesterday's shooting about to be uploaded to the _Top Gear_ website.

"That was a seriously fit girl standing at the front when we were doing the news, you know."

James raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Oh, don't worry, I'm yours-"

"That's almost romantic."

"-but, Jesus Christ, her _tits_ -"

"-if you weren't such a _massive perv_."

 _It's for the best, you wanted this_ the watching James knows, his arms held steadfast to his sides by a tangle of wires, but God this is hard to watch because they're just standing together and laughing but Jeremy is smiling at him like they're...and he should remember forever what Jeremy's murmuring in his ear now but instead it's slipping from his mind like water through outstretched fingers. Why did he ever think he wanted to forget this?

Lacuna took every memory that needed to be removed. But, perhaps, if James took Jeremy to a place he wasn't supposed to be...

"Jeremy!" the James watching himself says, grabbing the man and pulling him with him into a recess of his mind, a memory from long ago.

The journey there is white-bright fire, something basic and ancient but unknown and distant and new. It feels like they're rushing though stars.

It's probably the most reckless thing James has ever done.

They're in the garden of James's childhood house, and Jeremy's the same age as him - just a boy.

There are bits of Lego all over the lawn, a sunny unmanicured patch of grass shaded by next door's spreading chestnut tree. Jeremy sceptically surveys a model house, carefully red bricked and still half-built.

"Hide!" James says, like they're playing, grabbing Jeremy by the hand and pushing him into the garden shed.

"Time to go home, Jeremy," Jeremy's mother states firmly.

"No," says James, such a child. "Can't he stay here?"

"Time to go home, Jeremy" insists Jeremy’s mother again. She holds out her hand. James has met Jeremy's mother though, he remembers, and this woman is not quite her. She looks made up. She looks like how James would make her up.

The woman opens the shed door, tugs at the child Jeremy and laughs.

"See you, Jeremy," James says miserably, his body his own age again.

James blinks, and Jeremy and the woman have disappeared.

Now he hurtles through even more memories he must forget: they are in complete disorder and blown away from him before he can even snatch at them, like piles of fallen leaves in an autumn gale. Him and Jeremy sharing a look literally over Richard's head; kissing like teenagers whilst a forgotten pan on the stove started to burn; James swearing profusely as he shamefully wanks whilst watching Jeremy on the TV; James staring at Jeremy all through last year's BAFTA awards...Yet they are not entirely right - images whip past where some of the faces are eerily featureless; cars have no numberplates; streets have no ends. The memories have degraded, blurred at the edges, because of his forcing himself and Jeremy to the wrong place in his mind. His effort hadn't even worked. Had he managed to permanently damage his brain?

But then James is rushed right back to the timeline, the trajectory - the world changes again. Jeremy is standing in a long bright corridor that James knows well, and then the scene cracks apart like a shot pane of glass. James finds himself running after Jeremy, who's disappearing fast, but the same staircase as Jeremy's on takes James up instead of down; Television Centre is Escher's relativity and there's no way out.

This isn't the middle anymore, he's sped along the sequence of events - it's the start. Television centre (to be precise, the stationary cupboard near the _Top Gear_ office on the fourth floor) was, of course, the first time they... for a split second, James recalls his hand down Jeremy's jeans and Jeremy's hand down his with a stab of longing - but the memory's been distorted, already ruined.

The memory, this hall of mirrors, is crumbling around him; his mind is crumbling inside him. He stands alone.

 _Stop this_ , James thinks furiously, but no-one hears him. He cannot stop this; he cannot wake until the process is complete. Always alone in our own thoughts as we are, the final minutes in which James is aware what he's lost are when he feels more alone than ever.

And then Jeremy, with all the logic of a dream, is right in front of him. Their final few moments together, and they're not even real.

"Love you," James says, last-ditch, breathless, hoarse, eye to eye. He leans in, but Jeremy flickers away for the last time before their lips touch.

The last remnants of knowing what he and Jeremy were fall away, and James falls deeply asleep.

* * *

Filming has finished for the day, and the calm James associates with this - no more raucous audience to entertain, no more disastrous experiments with an engine or demanding star in a reasonably priced car - is tangible.

He and Jeremy are standing together in the cavernous space as men clear up the debris of a day of filming from the hangar. Richard is already walking out the door, on the phone to Mindy as he goes, but Jeremy doesn't seem to be quite so eager to leave.

"Want to smoke?" James asks Jeremy quietly. Jeremy nods, and they step outside as if they have all the time in the world.

Rain has barely begun to fall, droplets just light enough to make the world shimmer. The air, still warm, feels lighter now.

It's a day for firsts, this - something new's going to happen. James's stomach is twisting because he's felt like this before - certain, anticipatory, anxious - but can't for the life of him remember when or why. He can see the gaps now, but can't see what was in them or why the gaps are there.

Neither of them takes out their cigarettes or lighters, neither of them speak. Jeremy moves even closer so that James is between him and the wall with nowhere to run.

They're breathing the same slice of air, his and Jeremy's lips are that close, but when faced with the reality of demanding _what are you doing, what is this?_ James finds he can't because Jeremy is probably as clueless as he is.

"Do you want to maybe-" James begins, but Jeremy cuts him off entirely and effectively by carding his fingers through James's hair and kissing him.

There'll be lots of firsts that matter now (first kiss now, then first blow, first fuck, first "love you", first jealous argument, first "I can't do this"), and there'll be lots of firsts exactly like this one: another first touch in a chain of many, a cycle of discovering and forgetting for the rest of their lives. And they'll never know.


End file.
